God is born
Capitol Hill still festive this year (Photo credit: Yantar Yoga)
I miss Christmas in Poland with all the traditions and delicious food. During the pandemic a trip to Europe was not an option but DC’s Capitol Hill has done a good job keeping things bright and festive. On Christmas Eve I’m thinking back to my favorite Polish carol: Bóg się rodzi or God is born. Written in 1792 and set to a stately melody of a coronation polonaise for Polish kings, it is a truly special holiday tradition. Here are the lyrics of the first stanza and their translation, and a link to this beautiful performance by Poland’s National Philharmonic.
Bóg się rodzi, moc truchleje, / God is born and the night is shaken,
Pan niebiosów, obnażony, / The Lord of Heaven lies naked,
Ogień krzepnie, blask ciemnieje, / Fire is frozen, light is veiled
Ma granice Nieskończony. / The Eternal now has its limits.
Wzgardzony, okryty chwałą, / He was scorned, yet clothed with glory,
Śmiertelny Król nad wiekami! / Mortal King of the Ages!
Refrain / Chorus:
A Słowo Ciałem się stało, / And the Word was made flesh,
I mieszkało między nami. / And dwelt among us.
I’ve known this Christmas carol from childhood. Yet just now I looked at it with fresh eyes and it made me think of The Thunder, Perfect Mind, an ancient (most likely 4th century AD) poem discovered among the gnostic manuscripts at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. It is written from the feminine divine perspective structured around finding unity in opposites, structured similarly to this opening stanza of the Polish Christmas carol. Parts of it sounds like they could be the monologue of Mary, or rather as if Mary and Jesus somehow having merged:
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves. (…)
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband. (…)I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
But more comprehensively it is a powerful statement of divinity only in part from a female perspective. And why not? The divinity of Jesus by definition encompasses everything there is, ever has been, and will be - the masculine and feminine, light and darkness, fire and ice, silence and sound.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name. (…)I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
That leads me to the most powerful message Jesus came to share (Luke 17:20-21):
And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Jesus is very clear on this point: we all should search for the divine that is already, and always has been, within us. Don’t search for it in the sky, but instead look within and every day strive find it in your heart and act accordingly. This is where God truly is born. That’s it. That realization is the true Christmas miracle as far I’m concerned.
Sounds familiar to yoga practitioners? Well, I’m not going to venture into speculating whether Jesus studied in the East during his so-called lost years of the age of 12 to 30 not discussed in the gospels (although here are theories to that effect, see Jesus in India). Whether or not Jesus actually traveled to India it’s very likely that he would have been exposed to Eastern philosophies through the Silk Road trade routes that connected Palestine to India and China. I sense this influence in his teaching, but it’s equally possible he simply found this wisdom within. One truth, many paths… Merry Christmas, everyone!